mourners march
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: Three endings and a beginning. /reaction fic to the season 3 finale.


The sun rises on the East Coast.

Someone gets up in the morning, and it is every other morning. The sun is shining, the hot water hasn't run out yet, and they've just stepped in dog crap. (They really hope it's dog crap.) Which is gross, but there's nothing to do but scrape it off against the curb, or maybe a patch of grass if they're lucky.

Somewhere down there on the ground, people go about their lives like islands on a shifting sea. The subway roars as the trains roll in. Everyone is desperate to go on, to keep moving forward, to win their own little rat race.

They have obligations. They have class, they have a job, they have a line at the unemployment office to stand in and pray for work.

The sun rises on the East Coast, but it never sets.

* * *

Kirby O'Neil sits on the creaky bed in his fifth-story hotel room. He has a plain spiral notebook out, always does, just in case he remembers or realizes something remotely useful. There are ink stains on his wrists. He's not sure when that happened.

April hasn't called in days. He knows logically that it's not safe, that she is being hunted and this is the best way to keep himself out of harm's way so his daughter can focus on keeping humanity alive and un-enslaved.

The problem is that he can't contact his daughter or even know for sure that she's still alive herself. Kirby knows that April is someone special, brave and brilliant (and he would say so like her mother, except he never really knew her) but she should be a kid. She should be worrying about homework and school projects and... well, boys. She shouldn't be risking her life on some slim off-chance that she's enough to save anyone.

She saved him.

She helped save the Earth.

Knowing that doesn't _help_ any.

There's a slight tension above his right eye, and he can tell it'll be a full-blown headache in an hour if he doesn't do something about it. Kirby turns to reach his suitcase.

The television shows static.

He turns back, and there's someone not-human on the screen. And for a moment he knows hope, knows it like the taste of melted sugar on a cold day (he should know better, but he can still be stubborn like that).

Kirby abruptly realizes that yes, the world is probably going to end, and that's more than enough to send his headache screeching into full bloom (bad memories) and his hands to tear his hair. His scalp will ache, later, if there is a later.

He trusts that April can handle one invasion. It wouldn't be the first time. (He wishes that wasn't actually a comfort.)

But two? But this new alien who speaks so calmly and reasonably about killing a planet, (a world and everyone born to the diseased ruin of a world) will not be reasoned with. Anyone that calm about death doesn't care about life.

(Except their own, usually, but that only helps if the odds are somewhat even. A handful of stubborn outcasts with ninja skills against two invading races with vastly superior resources... those aren't even odds, they're a joke.)

What breaks him is the knowing that yet _again_ he won't be able to say goodbye.

He can't keep her safe.

* * *

Somewhere in the hidden places of this swiftly tumbling planet, someone is silent and running away. She hates. She hates and hates and knows where that ends and she is afraid and angry and confused and hurt and hopeful and that last one is the worst one of all, so she runs away.

Karai is still running when the sky bleeds red, when hurricane winds blow out of nowhere, when the tides rush past her like blood down the shower drain.

And the air is hot, hotso hot that breathing it would bake her lungs into useless meat. She jumps into the ocean.

The water boils away. Her brain boils too.

She can't care if she drowned or burned or both.

* * *

April knows she's lost a few seconds. Considering that bought them time to run, that's fine.

April isn't worried about what was lost. She has all the time in the world for regrets, but this isn't it.

She cares about why they were lost. About her mentor, her not-so-mysterious teacher who is was family, who will always be her friends' father. About her father who must have died with the Earth, and April is selfishly glad she didn't have to see him go, this time. About that stupid goddamn _monster_ Shredder, and she wishes Splinter wasn't so good at forgiving.

But she cares about who isn't lost, not yet. Not _yet_.

Her family is here.

She can hurt later.


End file.
